SPRINGFIELD, MO.- The Springfield Art Museum announced the acquisition of the Racela Collection of Contemporary Cuban Prints containing 76 unique prints made by 32 Cuban artists and one Chilean artist, each of whom have worked at one time or another at the Taller Experimental de Gráfica de Habana in Havana, Cuba. The collection includes work by former directors of the Taller including multiple prints by José Omar Torres Lopez, as well as master printers such as Carlos del Toro Orihuela.
The collection includes a full complement of printmaking processes including examples of lithography, collagraphy, intaglio, woodcut, and monoprinting. All of the prints were made between 1964 and 2003. The collection was most recently on view in the special exhibition El Grabado: Contemporary Cuban Printmaking (December 8, 2018 – March 17, 2019). It has also been exhibited in whole, and in part, at Northwest Missouri State University, Columbia College, the Kansas City Art Institute, and the United Community Center, Latino Arts Inc. in Milwaukee.
Prior to this acquisition, the Museum had no work by Cuban artists in the permanent collection. Curator of Art Sarah Buhr notes, “The addition of these works fills a cultural gap in the current collection, allows the Museum to tell broader stories about the use of lithography in the Americas, helps examine art-making within a socialist political system, and enables comparison between the work of contemporary Cuban artists and those of other artists in the permanent collection.”
The Racela Collection of Contemporary Cuban Prints was a generous donation by Jeremy Smith & Maria Racela-Smith. This is the first large-scale acquisition the Museum has announced in 2019, after announcing 98 new acquisitions during 2018, the Museum’s 90th Anniversary year, including work by Pablo Picasso, Rose O’Neill, Bob Palmer, Bruce West, Romero Britto, and Jordan Eagles, among others. The Springfield Art Museum is located at 1111 East Brookside Drive. Admission is always free. Donations are gratefully accepted.
